1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a maintenance method of a fluid ejecting apparatus.
2. Related Art
As a fluid ejecting apparatus for ejecting fluid, for example, an ink jet recording apparatus is known. The ink jet recording apparatus is an apparatus for recording letters, images, etc., on a medium and is configured to eject ink from nozzles provided in a recording head (ejection head) onto a medium. The ink jet recording apparatus has a cap member for preventing the inside of the nozzles from drying or preventing dust from entering the nozzles (for example, refer to Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2002-11864). In recent years, a technique in which an electrode is provided on the cap member to detect a potential difference between the cap member and the head after ink is ejected from the nozzles onto the cap member to automatically detect a missing dot of the nozzles is proposed.
The cap member has a suction mechanism that depressurizes a capped space to suck the ink from the nozzles. After the cap member is fitted to the head to perform a suction operation or the like, a negative pressure is usually created in the space covered by the cap. When the cap member is to be separated from the head in this state, if they are separated while a contact portion of the cap member and an ejection surface of the head are parallel to each other, the cap member may be suddenly separated from the head, causing ink to be scattered and deposited on the ejection surface. Therefore, they are separated from an end of the contact portion such that the contact portion of the cap member is tilted with respect to the ejection surface of the head. When the cap member is separated from the head in this manner, the cap member is often kept tilted with respect to the ejection surface of the head.
However, if the cap member is tilted with respect to the ejection surface, the distance between the electrode on the cap member and the ejection surface varies depending on the location of the electrode, which causes measurement noise when the potential difference between them is measured. Thus, precise detection of a missing dot of the nozzles becomes difficult.